Monday, March 15, 2010

Rain is a Good Thing

Since going to South Carolina to ride seems to be the cool thing to do these days I caved in and threw the bike in the truck and drove down there on Saturday for some mountain biking that is not quite in the mountains.

I met Jonathon at the Jocassee Gorges for what was supposed to be a big ride. Our reasoning for riding in SC was that we actually wanted to ride and since Pisgah has a little snow it seemed logical that South Carolina where the sun is always shining would be the place to ride. Last time I rode in Jocassee we did in fact ride some but I guess I'd forgotten that the gravel is the size of your fist.

Or that many of the hills are so steep you have no choice but to push your way to the top.

Instead of riding we were walking up the hills and then riding down. This was not at all what we had gone there for and although normally I really enjoy walking with my bicycle this was not a particularly fun start to the ride.

We were on the East side of 178 and explored the roads over there. They were very overgrown and full of dead fall. Once again the exact thing we were trying avoid by not riding in Pisgah. I don't know of any place I'd rather be more than Pisgah and was not really happy about pushing my bike through a bunch of branches in South Carolina when I could be doing the same thing in Pisgah. Yes, I am that much of a Pisgah snob. Anyway, somewhere along the way I fell crossing a slippery downed tree and pulled my groin muscle and developed a splitting headache. Now things really weren't fun and I voiced my thoughts on the matter frequently.

We were able to piece together the route we had in mind and found this quaint little waterfall along the way that cheered me up some.

Then we took a little break and discussed where to go from there. I was ready to just go home but the highest point in SC was right around the corner and the thought of actually riding my bike to the top of a mountain sounded really good. Then it started raining which made it sound even better so off we went.

The road was paved so we could in fact actually ride. It was a nice climb. Jonathon, who had been bragging that the only reason I was not having fun was because he was in front of me, quickly fell behind me and I settled in for what I hoped to be a long road to the top. It wasn't and before we knew it we were the highest people in SC.

It was Downhill from There and the ride which had started so poorly actually ended quite nicely.

Sunday I headed into Pisgah with the dog and my saw. We parked at the top of 477 and cleared our way up Club Gap to Black and then cleared Black to the last knob before Buckhorn. It was very, very bad and took all day to do. I got the trail corridor opened up but didn't bother with the small stuff on the tread. I predict lots of broken derailleur hangers this spring! It felt good to be in Pisgah working on the trails I love so much. Around 4pm I ran out of food and it started snowing so I turned around and we ran back down the freshly cleared trail to the truck.

For the most part the snow was gone but there was still a foot on the North face of Club Gap as well as some hefty drifts on Black.

Things got bad from here:

Duma stood guard while I spent the day dragging branches off the trail:

All the while the twin peaks of Clawhammer and Black Mountains loomed temptingly above us: